He(gettelfinger) likely wouldn't acknowledge, however, that his union demanded "more, more, more" -- and often got it -- when its biggest employers increasingly could not afford it; that labor contracts that pay laid-off people to sit at home or bar plant closings are increasingly indefensible; that being the undisputed "gold standard" for industrial workers has long since priced UAW members out of a competitive market, enabling others to undercut the union almost at will.
Nor would a long procession of auto execs, many of them now reclining in the retired comfort of million-dollar homes far from gritty Detroit, admit that they succumbed to short-term expedience too often. Wooed by the "cooperative" union-management spirit of the '80s and '90s, they mistook labor peace for smart business decision-making and ceded control of vast portions of their companies to union leaders whose goals were antithetical to theirs.